Contentions

The Washington Posteditors are on to the Obama budget scam: “The White House has tried to produce as much hoopla as possible around a proposed $17 billion in savings. But while the savings are nice as far they go, they are part of a budget that will add trillions to the national debt. The budget relies on so much borrowing that it will cost taxpayers more than $4 trillion just to cover interest payments for the next 10 years — more than twice what the federal government will spend on education, energy, homeland security and veterans combined.”

On the list of distasteful jokes, comparing a radio talk show host to a 9-11 terrorist and rooting for the host’s death is up there. And on the list of unpresidential displays, Obama laughing at the same is up there too. (Yes, if Bush did the same about Keith Olbermann it would be cause for a week of media angst, but let’s be honest Bush never would have done the same. For his many shortcomings he had a large amount of personal class and kindness. It is not everything in a president, but it is something.)

A must-read by James Capretta and Yuval Levin on stopping Obamacare: “Conservatives can make it clear they support reform. But they must make it even clearer that the Democrats’ plan would displace tens of millions of happily insured Americans and exacerbate the worst elements of the current system: gross inefficiency, high costs, and bureaucracy. President Obama and his congressional allies are pursuing a mammoth, complex, hugely expensive, ill-designed reform that is not likely to be popular when understood. Conservatives have a very real chance at stopping it if they highlight its key weaknesses and supply a superior alternative.”

Andy McCarthy explains that the Obama military commissions are pretty much the same as the Bush military commissions which candidate Barack Obama slammed. And “no,” the Obama team doesn’t “ever get called on their hypocrisy” by either the mainstream media or even the Left which pretends to care about these issues.

A blog title from Marty Peretz: “I’m Sick of Pelosi, Her Sanctimony and Her as Speaker; Maybe She Should Hand the Gavel Over to Jane Harman.” Well, if the Left really was looking for a leader who “stood up to George Bush” on interrogation, Harman would be it. The only one actually. But that would create cognitive dissonance and therefore must be ignored.

In marveling at Jim Moran’s hospitality for Guantanamo detainees I must admit I missed his raving about Robert E. Lee’s “patriotism.”(h/t Glenn Reynolds) Imagine if a Republican said that.

And Marc Ambinder has figured out that Democrats have a political problem with Guantanamo. Ya think?

Gail Collins sums up Arlen Specter’s week: “If he keeps it up at this rate, by the 2010 campaign season, Specter will be so helpful that he’ll have tied up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and left him buried in the desert surrounded by fire ants. After all this, the Democrats were so angry that they stripped their newest member of his all-important Senate seniority, leaving him without a good committee post or a place to stash all of his old staffers. By midweek, Specter looked a little like Dickens’s Little Nell, wandering he knew not whither.”

Lisa Schiffren on Obama’s compromise on the D.C. school voucher plan: “Pundits showed pictures of the black children who were going to be booted from the same schools the president’s daughters attend. . . [But] this is a sop to sensibilities, like pardoning the ceremonial turkey. The vast majority of D.C. students remain stuck in a failing system. But Obama won’t compromise either his big-government ideology or fealty to his backers, instead focusing on programs that don’t threaten the teachers unions or the government monopoly on education.” Well, it sounds like school voucher proponents need to keep up the rallies — they work!